Systems for the selective or demographic assembly of books and for imprinting an address or personalized message are shown in Abram et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,899,165 and Riley et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,121,818, both assigned to the assignee of this invention. The systems of Abram and Riley were implemented by applicant's assignee utilizing a DEC computer to control a bindery line.
The memory of the DEC computer limit the capacity and flexibility of the system. Certain setup features of the DEC system, as timing of the signature delivery mechanisms, have required revision of the computer program for each job. This is an expensive and time consuming procedure. Another specific problem with the DEC based system is control of the relative horizontal position of lines within multiple message fields.